cryptidarchivesfandomcom-20200215-history
Nandi bear
: Other names: Chemisit, chemosit, duba, engargiyar, geteit, giant forest hyena, kabiniro, kerit, kichwa mutwe, koddoelo, Mubende beast, ngargiya, ngoloko, ntebagarnyar, rwujigar, sabrookoo, shivuverre, too. : Country reported: Kenya, Uganda The Nandi bear or chemisit is a large cryptid reported from the highlands of western Kenya and Uganda,Eberhart, George (2002) Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology''Hobley, C. W. "Unidentified Beasts in East Africa", ''Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 7 (1913)Percival, A. Blayney "The Chemosit", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 8 (1914) described as a dangerous animal like a hyena, a bear, or a baboon.Heuvelmans, Bernard (1955) On the Track of Unknown Animals''Coleman, Loren & Clark, Jerome (1999) ''Cryptozoology A to Z''Shuker, Karl (1995) ''In Search of Prehistoric Survivors Bernard Heuvelmans and others have identified the Nandi bear as an amalgamation of various different animals, including perhaps two genuine cryptids: a giant hyena and a giant baboon. Etymology The Nandi bear is named for the Nandi people who live around Kapsabet, an area where the animal was frequently seen. Geoffrey Williams, one of the first eyewitnesses, compared the animal he saw to a bear, and the name stuck. However, prior to the 1930's the name "chemisit" or "chemosit" was more commonly used. In the first decades of the 20th Century it was often referred to simply as an unknown or unidentified animal of the Uasin Gishu, and later of the Magadi Railway. "Chemisit" comes from the Kalenjin for "devil". Description According to Heuvelmans, the sightings which cannot be explained by mistaken identity all conform to a single description of an animal with a "(1) thick stocky body, (2) high withers, sloping back, (3) forequarters covered with thick fur, hindquarters smoother and barer, (4) long rather pointed snout, (5) small ears, (6) no visible tail, colour tawny to dark brown". George Eberhart further seperated the Nandi bear into two main cryptids: a large, baboon-like beast, and a hyena-like creature. After examining the sightings, he offered descriptions of both versions: *The hyena-like animal is twice the size of a spotted hyena, with shaggy brown hair and a short head displaying red eyes, small ears, and large teeth. It has a long mane on its forequarters and a sloping back and forelegs longer than its hindlegs. It has a short tail. It leaves spade-shaped digitigrade tracks larger than those of a man, with three toes and huge, inward-turned claws, and pads. *The baboon-like animal is a thickset animal, 3 feet 6 inches to 4 feet 6 inches at the shoulder, and 4 to 5 feet when standing on its hindlegs. It is dark brown or tawny, with long shaggy hair and a long head similar to that of a bear joine to a short neck, displaying small ears, a stumpy nose, and a pointed snout. Its front area, shoulders, and front legs are thickly furred, whilst the hindquarters are relatively bare. The withers are high and the back is sloping, and the tail is small or nonexistent. It leaves oblong plantigrade tracks 5.5 inches long and and 3.5 inches wide, displaying five clawed toes. Huevelmans also noted the difference between the tracks of the Magadi Railway animal and those of the animal which took Captain Hichens' dog. The Nandi bear rests on its haunches like a true bear, is described as having a loping run or "sideways canter", also almost like a bear, and the baboon-like variety is capable of standing upright but other than this, as the only detailed accounts of encounters with the animal are brief, most information on the Nandi bear's behaviour must come from native testimony. It is described as aggressive and highly dangerous, killing livestock and animals, which it will climb, leap, or force its way through fences and thorn bomas to get through.It is also said to force its way into huts during the night to kill the occupants. Various native sources as well as Captain Hichens describe its "terrifying howl" or "moaning call". Perhaps most notably, it is said to tear or smash open the heads of livestock and humans to eat their brains, a feature it shares with the Malawi terror beast. Captain Hichens wrote that the Nandi bear waits in trees near roads to waylay travellers and rip their heads open. Physical evidence Tracks Nandi bear track.png|(1) Rough sketch of the track found by F. Schindler near the Magadi Railway. Skull Sightings Undated The Nandi bear was said to have been more common before the rinderpest epidemic at the end of the 19th Century, which decimated the populations of various ungulates including the then-cryptozoological giant forest hog. During the colonial era the Nandi bear was blame for the allegedly "hundreds" of natives who were found dead with their skulls crushed every year, probably the victims of hyenas. It was widely feared. Two well-known colonists of British East Africa, Major Braithwaite and Mr. C. Kenneth Archer gave one of the best accounts of the Nandi bear. They saw an animal which they thought was a lioness at first, until they noticed the impression of a snout. The beast stood very high forward, about 4 foot 3 inches 4 foot 6 inches at the shoulder. "The back," they said, "sloped steeply to the hindquarters and the animal moved with a shambling gait which can best be compared with the shuffle of a bear. The coat was thick and dark brown in color. Finally, the beast broke into a shambling trot and made for a belt of trees near the river, where it was lost." Some years before 1912, the Nandi killed a shivuverre after it climbed onto the roof of a hut, broke through, and killed everyone inside. The people of the village burned down this hut with the animal inside. Geoffrey Williams heard of a preserved skin in Kabras, but was unable to obtain it. At some point shortly before 1918, a "gadett" appeared on the farm of Cara Buxton, where three sheep were missing. All ten were found, seven dead and three alive, and all of them without brains. Over the next ten days the same thing happened to fifty-seven goats and sheep, of which thirteen were found alive. The locals in the area described the culprit as walking on two legs, snatching babies, and killing men. Eventually it was tracked to a ravine and speared to death, whereupon it was discovered to be a very large spotted hyena. "It had evidently turned brain-eater through some sort of madness".Buxton, Cara "The 'Gadett' or Brain-Eater" The Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 13 (1918) However, it was not completely proven that the slain animal was the culprit. The story is similar to that of the Malawi terror beast. Charles Stoneham saw what his friends believed was a Nandi bear near the Kipsanoi River in Sotik. He described it as being the size of a lion but moving differently, with a pig-like snout, and an enormous tail the size of a tree trunk. Its ears were large, circular, and transparent. He rushed indoors to grab a rifle, but by the time he returned the animal was fleeing. Although his friends said he must have seen a Nandi bear, he himself believed it was some form of mutant or hybrid aardvark. Ivan T. Sanderson wrote that there was a brown shaggy skin in London's Natural History Museum which may have belonged to the Nandi bear. 1905 The first recorded sighting of the Nandi bear was made in around 1905 by Geoffrey Williams, who was on an expedition to the Uasin Gishu in western British East Africa. He saw a 5-foot-high animal around 30 yards away, sitting like a zoo bear, with a long head and small, pointed ears. It ran with a sideways canter. :"I was traveling with a cousin on the Uasingishu just after the Nandi expedition, and, of course, long before there was any settlement up there. We had been camped ... near the Mataye and were marching towards the Sirgoit Rock when we saw the beast ... I saw a large animal sitting up on its haunches no more than 30 yards away. Its attitude was just that of a bear at the 'Zoo' asking for buns, and I should say it must have been nearly 5 feet high ... it dropped forward and shambled away towards the Sirgoit with what my cousin always describes as a sort of sideways canter. I snatched my rifle and took a snapshot at it as it was disappearing among the rocks, and, though I missed it, it stopped and turned its head round to look at us ... In size it was, I should say, larger than the bear that lives in the pit at the 'Zoo' and it was quite as heavily built. The fore quarters were very thickly furred, as were all four legs, but the hind quarters were comparatively speaking smooth or bare ... the head was long and pointed and exactly like that of a bear ... I have not a very clear recollection of the ears beyond the fact that they were small, and the tail, if any, was very small and practically unnoticeable. The color was dark ..."''Williams, Geoffrey "An Unknown Animal on the Uasingishu", ''Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 4 (1912) When this sighting was finally published in 1912, it piqued interest in the unknown animal of the Uasin Gishu. circa 1910's During the surveying of the area where the Magadi Railway was to be built, Clifford Hill's Dutch boy encountered a large animal on the Koora Plains. He was unable to described it, but when shown a book of animals selected the bear as being the most like the animal he saw. A sub-contractor, Mr. Caviggia, saw the animal along the Magadi Railway track. His description tallied with that of G. W. Hickes. C. W. Hobley wrote that several workers during the construction of the Magadi Railway saw the tracks of a strange animal. Fritz Schindler saw and sketched this track. 1912 In 1912 a Major Toulson encountered a long-haired black beast on the Uasin Gishu, which had just attempted to raid his camp's kitchen. It ran with a shuffling walk and was around 18 to 20 inches at the shoulder He later described his encounter to anthropologist C. W. Hobley: :"It was getting dark when one of my boys came into my room and said that a leopard was close to the kitchen. I rushed out at once and saw a strange beast making off: it appeared to have long hair behind and was rather low in front. I should say it stood about 18 in. to 20 in. at the shoulder; it appeared to be black, with a gait similar to that of a bear--a kind of shuffling walk. Unfortunately it was nearly dark at the time and I did not get a fair view of the head. :"Several Dutchmen had asked me a few days before what the strange animal was on the plateau; they said it was like a bear, but they had only seen it at dusk; it turned on their dogs and chased them off. They described it as a thick-set beast and it was making a peculiar moaning cry."Hobley, C. W. "On Some Unidentified Beasts", ''Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913)'' 1913 There were two sightings of the Nandi bear in March 1913. The first of these, which lacks a specific date, was made by N. E. F. Corbett, the District Commissioner of Eldoret in British East Africa: :"I was having lunch by a wooded stream, the Sirgoi River, just below Toulson's farm ... to my surprise I walked right into the beast. It was evidently drinking and was just below me, only a yard or so away ... it shambled across the stream into the bush ... I could not get a very good view, but am certain that it was a beast I have never seen before. Thick, reddish-brown hair, with a slight streak of white down the hindquarters, rather long from hock to foot, rather bigger than a hyena, with largish ears. I did not see the head properly; it did not seem to be a very heavily built animal." The second sighting, perhaps the most famous, was made by railway engineer G. W. Hickes on 8 March. He observed the animal from 50 yards away. Whilst travelling on a motor trolley he saw what appeared to be a hyena straight ahead: :"It was almost on the line when I first saw it and at that time it had already seen me and was making off at a right angle to the line ... As I got closer to the animal I saw it was not a hyena. At first I saw it nearly broadside on: it then looked about as high as a lion. In color it was tawny--about like a black-mained sic lion--with very shaggy long hair. It was short and thickset in the body, with high withers, and had a short neck and stumpy nose. It did not turn to look at me, but loped off--running with its forelegs and with both hind legs rising at the same time. As I got alongside it, it was about forty or fifty yards away and I noticed it was very broad across the rump, had very short ears, and had no tail that I could see. As its hind legs came out of the grass I noticed the legs were very shaggy right down to the feet, and that the feet seemed large..."Hickes, G. W. "Notes on the Unknown Beast Seen on the Magadi Railway" Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913) Not long afterwards a native servant of another engineer, Mr. Archibald, saw an animal very much like the one described by Hickes, but standing on its hind legs. It stared the servant down and refused to run away. 1914 A Nandi bear is said to have been killed near Kapsowar in around 1914. After it killed several people, villagers tricked it into attacking a dummy man in the doorway of a hut, then shot it to death with arrows. 1925 In 1925 Captain William Hichens was sent out to investigate depredations made by the animal in a village in the Kenya Colony. The latest victim was a 6-year-old girl, snatched after the monster forced its way through an 8-foot boma.Newton, Michael (2009) Hidden Animals During the night his tent was attacked by something which gave a terrifying roar and carried off his pet dog. :"...the whole tent rocked; the pole to which Mbwambi was tied flew out and let down the ridge-pole, enveloping me in flapping canvas. At the same moment the most awful howl I have ever heard split the night. The sheer demoniac horror of it froze me still...I heard my pi-dog yelp just once. There was a crashing of branches in the bush, and then thud, thud, thud, of some huge beast making off. But that howl! I have heard half a dozen lions roaring in a stampede-chorus not twenty yards away; I have heard a maddened cow-elephant trumpeting; I have heard a trapped leopard make the silent night miles a rocking agony with screaming, snarling roars. But never have I heard, nor do I wish to hear again, such a howl as that of the chimiset. A trail of red spots on the sand showed where my pi-dog had gone. Beside that trail were huge footprints, four times as big as a man's, showing the imprint of three huge clawed toes, with trefoil marks like a lion's pad where the sole of the foot pressed down. But no lion ever boasted such a paw as that of the monster which had made that terrifying spoor."Hichens, William "On the Trail of the Brontosaurus: Encountes with Africa's Mystery Animals" Chamber's Journal (1927) Hichens followed the tracks and spent a week in the forest searching for the animal, but never found it or his dog. circa 1930's Captain F. D. Hislop, district commissioner of Kapsabet, saw a bear-like animal 3 feet high at the shoulder, with a small pointed head. It ran off on all fours. Hislop was sure that the animal was neither a hyena or a baboon.Report of the Game Department of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (1932-34) Also in the 1930's, Gunnar Anderssen reported that an unknown animal had killed a forest hog at Kaimosi. The animal was described to him by locals as "very big, with long black hair and a long tail carried like a dog's". Anderssen also discovered some ambigious, leopardlike tracks nearby. 1957 or 1958 Douglas Hutton shot two animals on the Chemomi Tea Estate in Kenya in either 1957 or 1958. They stood 3 feet at the shoulder and had sloping backs and heavy manes. The bodies were layed out to be seen by the workers, and were stripped to the bone by ants. These bones were identified by the Nairobi Museum as belonging to "giant forest hyenas". circa 1960's Engineer Angus McDonald was awoken in Kipkabus by an animal which invaded his hut through a window and chased him around for 5 minutes. McDonald said that it was 7 foot tall, with an apelike face, and ran as well on two legs as it did on four. Its tracks were round. The villagers identified it as a chemisit. 1981 In July 1981, a large hyena-like animal was seen in the same area where Hutton shot the "giant forest hyenas" in the 1950's. Expeditions 2010 (Destination Truth) Theories The Nandi bear is almost certainly an amalgamation of various animals: hyenas, ratels, aardvarks, and African hunting dogs, as well as a genuine cryptid. Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that the problem began when Geoffrey Williams compared the animal he saw in 1905 to a bear. When Hickes saw a similar animal, the Williams sighting came to mind, and rumours spread of a bear-like animal in Kenya, prompting others who had seen unidentified bear-like animals to come forwards. The identity of the "real Nandi bear" is speculated to be a giant baboon, a giant hyena, a surviving chalicothere, or an unknown bear. Mistaken identity Several scientists including I. R. Pocock, Superintendent of the London Zoo, wrote that the Nandi bear was a misidentified hyena, specifically an erythristic (red) spotted hyena, which would be fairly unfamiliar in Kenya.ShukerNature: DO BLACK RATELS AND ORANGE HYAENAS MAKETH THE NANDI BEAR? Pocock was sent an erythristic spotted hyena skin by a man who claimed it came from a Nandi bear. Additionally, Charles Stoneham wrote that in 1930 he was given a skull said to belong to a Nandi bear which had been killing livestock. It was examined and it turned out to belong to a brown hyena. However, Captain Hichens wrote that hyenas are so common around African villages that a villager confusing one with the Nandi bear would be like an Englishman confusing a rabbit with a fox. He also pointed out that hyenas drag their victims; they do not leap over 6 foot fences with calves in their mouths. Heuvelmans concluded that the Nandi bear could not be any known species of hyena. However, he and others have noted that the "Nandi bear" could have been blamed for many killings actually carried out by hyenas. The sightings in which the animal is described as black and relatively small are likely to be of misidentified elderly honey badgers or ratels. They are famously aggressive, and in old age, when they are at their largest, they may turn entirely black, which would disguise their identity from eyewitnesses. Blayney Percival wrote that an animal reported from the Sotik country, very similar to the Nandi bear and said to be the size of a pointer, turned out to be a honey badger. Heuvelmans identified a black ratel as the subject of the Toulson, Hislop, and Anderssen sightings, and thought it could explain sightings of the "too". Heuvelmans was almost certain that the animal seen by Charles Stoneham was an aardvark (Stoneham himself believed it was a mutant or hybrid aardvark) in light of his description of its tree trunk-like tail and round, transluscent ears. Hobley wrote that sceptics during the first wave of sightings in the 1910's believed the animal seen by Williams and Hickes to be an aardvark. Heuvelmans also suspected that the animal seen by Corbett, lightly-built with round ears and reddish-brown with a white streak, was an African hunting dog. George Eberhart also mentions the African civet and the giant forest hog as possible candidates. Giant baboon Giant hyena Chalicothere The third theory regarding the unknown animal behind the Nandi bear sightings, originally suggested by Charles William Andrews, reported by Heuvelmans, and supported by Louis S. Leakey,Leakey, Louis S. (1935) Does the Chalicothere, Contemporary of the Okapi, Still Survive? is that it was a surviving species of African chalicothere. These horse-sized animals, with sloping backs, bear-like heads, long claws, and short tails, agree very well with physical descriptions of the Nandi bear – and the forefeet of a chalicothere, with three toes and inward-turned claws, would also be somewhat consistent with the "hyena-like" Nandi bear identified by Eberhart. Chalicothere fossils have been found in an area where chimiset attacks were reported, and Heuvelmans noted that if the okapi, a relative of certain giraffids contemporary to chalicotheres, could survive in Central Africa to the present day, there is little reason why a chalicothere couldn't. However, if the Nandi bear were a chalicothere, it could not be a vicious predator, as chalicotheres were certainly herbivorous. Chalicotheres were also rather larger at the shoulder than the 5 feet described for the Nandi bear. Unknown bear Dale Drinnon suggested that the Nandi bear really was a true bear, noting that the early sightings described an animal which sounded very much like a bear, and the animal's spoor somewhat resembles bear tracks. The Nandi bear's reported habit of killing with a swipe of its paws is similar to how bears fight. Bears were reported as living in Ethiopia in Roman times. Naish also discovered a "bear skull from Tanzania" for sale online in 2006, although it may actually have been a lion skull.Frontiers of Zoology: Is The Nandi Bear Actually a Bear? Further cryptozoological reading *Williams, Geoffrey "An Unknown Animal on the Uasingishu", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 4 (1912) *ickes, G. W. "Notes on the Unknown Beast Seen on the Magadi Railway" Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913) *Hobley, C. W. "On Some Unidentified Beasts", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913) *Hobley, C. W. "Unidentified Beasts in East Africa", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 7 (1913) *Percival, A. Blayney "The Chemosit", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 8 (1914) *Hichens, William "On the Trail of the Brontosaurus: Encountes with Africa's Mystery Animals" Chamber's Journal (1927) *Leakey, Louis S. (1935) Does the Chalicothere, Contemporary of the Okapi, Still Survive? *Heuvelmans, Bernard (1955) On the Track of Unknown Animals *Shuker, Karl (1995) In Search of Prehistoric Survivors Notes and references Category:Cryptids Category:Africa Category:Kenya Category:Uganda Category:Bears Category:Primates Category:Theory: Mistaken identity Category:Theory: New species Category:Theory: Living fossil Category:Theory: Living fossil - Other Category:Featured